Chapter 2: THE COLLEGE AT THE BACK OF BEYOND
Wednesday, April 7th… Goat Rock, Montana...
Glacier Institute—a private, progressive liberal arts college with emphasis on visual and performing arts—was located in the middle of nowhere between Whitefish and the foothills of Glacier National Park. Its presence generally went unnoticed by the seasonal migrations of winter skiers heading north to the slopes of mountain resorts or summer tourists venturing east to the park.
Though students took all studies seriously, their chief aim was to enhance the nation's cultural welfare through aesthetic appreciation. After all, man did not live by bread alone—he needed sights and sounds pleasing to heart and mind. Promoting what pleased the soul was best left to other establishments specializing in those matters. Sororities, fraternities and competitive sports had no place here, where individual achievement was prized above team spirit.
The coeducational dormitories were unmonitored as students were expected to conduct themselves with good sense, good manners and discretion. An apartment building housed faculty and non-teaching support personnel. Hardly anyone lived off-campus as there weren't many other places to live.
An unincorporated community with the uninspired name of Goat Rock had gradually coalesced at the entrance to the campus. On either side of the main drag lay the business district: independent family-owned services including one each restaurant, coffee shop, unisex beauty/barber salon, and gas station/convenience store. The lone grocery incorporated a pharmacy and mini-clinic with a part-time nurse who doubled as pharmacist. The general store dealt in hardware, ammunition, feed and seed, and a limited offering of basic clothing. A cement-block edifice labeled City Hall housed the county deputy sheriff who was also fire chief and the mayor whose day job was postmistress of the closet-size facility as well as the town's lone attorney. In a similar structure nearby dwelt the fire department and emergency medical service, volunteers all. Three courtyard-style motels were always booked solid during college events—latecomers had to find rooms as far away as Whitefish and Columbia Falls. For the truly desperate, rental units were occasionally available in a recreational vehicle campground adjacent to rental stables and a wrecker service fronting a salvage yard.
As unassuming as it was, Goat Rock offered just about everything anyone needed, if not what he or she desired. While students regularly patronized local establishments for odds and ends unobtainable from the on-campus store, there were no amusements or entertainment venues to divert their attentions—which was exactly how the city fathers and the dean of the institute conspired to keep it. The nearest state-controlled liquor store was located in Whitefish, although limited quantities of beer and wine could be purchased at the grocery under strict guidelines enforced by the proprietor. Devoid of zoning restrictions, a loosely-defined residential area of cabins, modular homes and mobile homes fringed the outskirts of the village.
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The girls…
Vocal performance students Pallas Athena Ross and Veronica April Slate lived across the corridor from each other in Caruso Hall. Having met in their sophomore year, the girls had bonded over their similar heritage. Pallas Ross was a native Montanan with an American mother and British-born expatriate father.
Veronica 'Ronnie' Slate's father, also British-born, was the product of a workplace romance that had dissolved amicably in his early childhood. As a career foreign service diplomat and widower, Sidney had entrusted care of his infant daughter to his father Mark and stepmother Alice in England. Though having never married and maintaining her principal residence in Los Angeles, Sidney's American mother, April Dancer, remained an active presence in her granddaughter's life.
Ronnie had spent so many of her teenage years shuttling back and forth between London and California that she was able to toggle between nationalities with ease. With her British grandparents, she was Veronica Slate—poshness personified. Visiting with her American grandmother during school holidays and taking as her pseudonym April's surname, she morphed into 'Ronnie Dancer', surfboard goddess. Occasionally, when vexed or under stress, she would get her two faces mixed up and she and Pallas would have a good giggle over it.
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The boys…
Pallas's fiancée, music student Rowan Cameron, and Ronnie's boyfriend, student of dance Mikhail 'Misha' Rostov, both lived two doors down from the girls… until a week ago: Misha received an offer he couldn't refuse from the New York City Ballet Company. Abruptly dropping out, he kissed Ronnie farewell and jetéed away to the City That Never Sleeps. Hot on the heels of Mikhail's departure came a new boy to town, intending to visit his cousin Misha and chagrined to find him gone.
Never one to wallow in a pity party over a terminated love affair, Ronnie perked up at first sight of the handsome stranger with eyes the deep crystalline blue of Crater Lake, an enigmatic smile and shaggy shoulder-length sandy blond hair highlighted with sun streaks. His body type was similar to Misha's—short, slender, physically fit but not musclebound. Like his cousin, he moved with a dancer's feline grace. Oh, yeah. She fully intended to get a piece of that before he moved on, as she confided to Pallas in a private moment.
"Good grief!" Pallas scolded. "You've only known the dude five minutes!"
"So what?" Ronnie sniffed. "How many times have you gone on about wanting to dive on Rowan from the moment you first met?"
"Yeah… but it was months before we did the deed. You don't know anything at all about this man."
"I seem to recall you complaining it took longer than that to really get to know Row. What is it about men, anyway? Either all they want is to yak about themselves… or trying to get anything out of them is like trying open an oyster with a plastic butter knife."
"But shouldn't you find out something about his background? What if he's a criminal wanted by the FBI, CIA, CPB, PETA or Interpol?"
"Look… I don't care if he's on the run from MI5, CI5, Scotland Yard, Greenpeace, Le Bureau des Étrangers or UNCLE. Maybe he's a gypsy… I mean, who lives in a camper van? I'm not looking for Mr Right anyway. I'm looking for Mr Right Now and he's it. End of story."
"Uh… Uncle who?"
"Never mind."
"Omigod… you're such a slut!"
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That evening...
Pallas, Rowan and Ronnie and treated the visitor to dinner at the Dew Drop Inn. A pleasant conversationalist with exquisite manners, he was nonetheless vague about himself and they were too polite to ask questions. At best they gathered that 'Eli Roman' was on an indefinite leave of absence from an unspecified occupation and touring the west with no particular itinerary in mind.
One nugget of personal information was of more than passing interest to the three students. It transpired that Eli was also a musician, admitting to some proficiency on the piano before deftly embarking on another subject. On the return drive to their residence hall after dropping him off at his camper, they speculated his origins lay in some former Eastern Bloc country—most likely Russia, as his cousin Misha proudly hailed from Moscow. He spoke softly with what they assumed must be Russian intonation, faint though it was… and however fluent and idiomatically correct his English, it probably wasn't his native language.